How many calories in chicken breast?
155–175 kcal
100 g of cooked skinless chicken breast is roughly 155–175 calories. Nearly every mistake with chicken comes from confusing raw and cooked weights.
By serving
Serving by serving.
Ranges rather than single numbers. Home cooking has no standard serving, and the same dish made in two kitchens genuinely differs by this much — a single figure would be false precision.
| Serving | Calories |
|---|---|
| 100 g, cooked, no added fat | 155–175 |
| 100 g, raw, skinless | 105–120 |
| 1 typical breast (150 g raw) | 160–180 |
| 100 g, chicken curry with gravy | 180–260 |
Per 100 g of cooked chicken breast: 30–32 g protein · 0 g carbs · 3–4 g fat
Why the range
What moves this number.
If you want a better estimate than the table gives, these are the things worth paying attention to. Everything else is noise by comparison.
- Raw or cooked weight. Chicken loses about 25% of its weight in cooking, so 100 g cooked came from roughly 135 g raw. Logging cooked weight against a raw figure understates it by a quarter.
- Skin. Skin-on chicken is roughly 50–70 calories higher per 100 g.
- Cooking fat and gravy. A curry adds 50–120 calories per 100 g depending on the masala.
- Breast or thigh. Thigh is around 40–60 calories higher per 100 g cooked, and considerably more forgiving to cook.
Logging it
You do not need this table every day.
Looking a number up works once. Doing it for every item of every meal is the reason most people stop tracking within a fortnight.
BetterCal has no database to search. Say or type the meal the way you would describe it to a person — "chicken breast and dal" — and it is logged with calories and macros in one go. If your version differs from the estimate, correct it once and it remembers, so over a few weeks the numbers converge on your kitchen rather than an average of everyone else's.
Frequently asked questions
How much protein is in 100 g of chicken breast?
About 30–32 g cooked, or 22–24 g raw. The difference is water loss rather than any change in the protein itself.
Is chicken breast better than thigh for weight loss?
Breast is leaner per gram, but thigh is not a problem if it fits your target. Adherence usually matters more than the 50-calorie difference.
Why is this a range and not one number?
Because the honest answer is a range. Serving sizes are not standardised and cooking fat varies enormously between kitchens. A single confident figure would be more convenient and less true. See how accurate calorie estimates really are.
Do I need to weigh food to track it properly?
No. Weighing improves precision that you mostly do not need — being consistently within 10% is enough to lose or gain weight predictably. The easiest way to track calories covers the method.
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